Contenu du sommaire

Jean William Lapierre, Georges Noizet : The young generation of Frenchmen and conscientious objection. The authors examine replies to a question concerning conscientious objection included in a survey on civic attitudes carried out in 1962. The sampling consisted of young French people of both sexes at technical and secondary schools, and teachers' training colleges. A question proposed the alternative of condemning or approving refusal to do military service, and there followed a free discussion during which the attitude adopted was justified. The replies are analysed in relation to age, sex, and various social, cultural, religious and political variables. The authors then analyse the arguments. The survey shows that the themes put forward in the arguments are more often based on stereotyped social standards than on facts. Some of the interviewees however demonstrate a capacity to form

Raymond Boudon : Individual and collective properties: a problem in ecological analysis. With a knowledge of the percentage of workers and that of Communist votes, is it possible to determine the proportion of workers who vote Communist ? This is a problem of a general nature which arises when the unit studied by means of a set of data is a collective and not an individual one. The author first shows how, in the absence of particular hypotheses, the problem cannot be solved. He puts forward a theory explaining three empirical phenomena : (1) the fact that ecological correlations are generally high ; (2) that they increase with the group ; (3) that they are in general curvilinear. On the basis of these results he builds up a number of models, which in certain cases provide a solution to the problem. An example, concerning Belgian electoral data, is given, to show the strategy of research which can be based on this analysis. The article contains numerous references to literature on the problem, published in the United States and in France.